Filner sued over tourism funds

The board of the hotelier-run Tourism Marketing District sued Mayor Bob Filner and the city of San Diego on Friday over his refusal to sign a nearly 40-year deal that would allow the group to collect roughly $30 million annually to spend on tourism efforts.

The deal, approved last year by the City Council and hoteliers, was supposed to begin Jan. 1, but Filner won’t sign the agreement. The mayor said he would like a new, shorter deal that requires hotels to provide better pay for hotel workers, more money for city coffers and indemnification for the city if it is deemed illegal in court.

Terry Brown, the district’s board chairman, said the decision to file a lawsuit to compel Filner to approve the current deal was done regrettably.

“We do this reluctantly, but given the proposed alternatives, which we believe would be severely detrimental to the many thousands of people employed or who work in the tourism and hospitality economy, we feel we have no choice but to move forward in the courts,” he said in a statement. “We’ve filed this suit in the interest of protecting and preserving a partnership with the city that has served our industry and tourism employees, and the many small businesses that work with the tourism and hospitality industry — as well as the city of San Diego and the regional economy.”

In a statement Friday, Filner said he’s been asking hoteliers to negotiate a new deal since before his Dec. 3 inauguration and they’ve refused to discuss any of the issues he’s raised.

“Throughout this entire process, my repeated requests for negotiation have been met with threats and scare tactics,” Filner said. “Now those same hoteliers who have refused to negotiate for three months have decided to sue me in an effort to force me to sign an agreement that rips off San Diego taxpayers. Well I wasn’t elected to fight for the interests of a small band of wealthy hoteliers. I was elected to fight for the taxpayers of San Diego.”

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The two sides have described the other as unwilling to budge although Filner said he was willing to extend the existing terms for a year or two to allow negotiations on longer-term deal. The last meeting between Filner and Brown occurred Monday and no progress was made, leading to Friday’s lawsuit.

The Tourism Marketing District is asking a Superior Court judge to order Filner “to sign and implement the contract without further delay,” make a declaration that the mayor is required to sign the contract and order the city to pay its legal fees. It argues that, under the city charter, the mayor doesn’t have the discretion to decide whether he wants to sign contracts but rather that he is obligated to sign contracts and has no power to defy the City Council’s decision.

Before leaving office in December, then-Mayor Jerry Sanders signed resolutions authorizing a corporation run by San Diego hotel owners and operators to oversee the expenditure of tourism marketing funds. However, the actual contract between the city and the corporation was not ready for Sanders to sign before he left office. The period for a mayoral veto had already expired so Filner’s only recourse to block the deal was to withhold his signature.

The Tourism Marketing District, which was created in 2007 because the city’s budget woes led spending on tourism to dwindle, generates revenue through a 2 percent hotel room surcharge. The money is still being collected but can’t be spent until the contract is signed.

The City Council has scheduled a Monday hearing to discuss the economic impacts of the district.